Gourd Festival

In the last couple of days Bob and I have noticed a subtle difference in the air.  It feels like Spring. When we take Auggie for a walk around 9:00 am we don't need a jacket anymore, and the air is perfumed with the scent of flowers blooming.

Saturday we went to the annual gourd festival in Casa Grande. It's hard to believe, but I have spent my whole life in ignorance of how a gourd may be decorated or used other than, say, a bowl of gourds sitting on a table. How my life has been lived in ignorance! Apparently, gourds are big in the Southwest.  People take classes in gourd decorating. They enter decorated gourds in competitions. They make dolls, animals, jewelry, and musical instruments out of them.  Gourds may be painted, cut, combined with pine needles to make baskets.  Who knew??

They may be made into whimsical people...

...or turned into lampshades.

Some gourd artists even combine them with precious stones and deer antlers to make the most fabulous baskets...

...or use them in transportation.  Haha!

In addition to gourd artists, we spent some time talking with makers of Indian Love Flutes.  They are like recorders, but a little simpler to play, with a haunting tone. Bob is going to make me one.